Ontology

Søren Kierkegaard is an existential philosopher, which means he places a major emphasis on an individual’s freedom and existence. In Kierkegaard’s book, The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard tries to offer his reader’s a complex answer to very popular question what is human nature. He concludes in his work that human beings are an embodied spirit and that our spirit is one in the same with our self. The more we use our free choice, the more we become our individual selves which is an act of…

Locke and Personal Identity Locke presents the idea of personal identity as the question of what makes us the same person over time. How are we able to identify ourselves outside of our physical bodies? Does one remain the same person even if we have physical resemblances and continuity of memory? In the movie Self/Less (Ben Kingsley, 2015), Damian a rich real estate entrepreneur is at the peak of his success is faced with the rough reality of cancer, that is untreatable and consuming his body.…

In Michael Huemer’s essay, “The Lure of Radical Skepticism,” he expands on the idea that ‘we cannot know anything,’ by outlining four different arguments supporting the claim. (Huemer 47-57) René Descartes holds the opposite opinion, which he discusses in ‘Meditations One and Two.’ While there is validity to both sides of the argument, Huemer’s essay proves to be more reliable after dissecting Descartes’ concepts of existence. Huemer proposes that no one can know anything about the external…

Human beings are thinking creatures but they are more than that. They live their lives with different memories and experiences to guide them along the way. To prove that a person knows whom they are by proving that they think is nonsensical. Within Descartes’s meditation is the nature of humans will be shown through the thinking thing or cogito but this is not accurate at all because humans are more complex beings than just thinking things. First, I will demonstrate what the second meditation,…

Descartes gives three arguments to try and make himself believe that all his thoughts, beliefs and previous knowledge is nonexistent or has no value. He is trying to convince himself that he knows nothing. I think this is a rather difficult task to perform considering that no matter what you try to do to convince yourself of something you will always go back to your old thoughts and beliefs. It is just how our minds work. The first main argument I am going to talk about is the Dreaming Argument…

The thought of understanding the nature and understanding ourselves, although it may be common to take it for granted, has undergone development to the point that it is now. In 17th century when Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) was around, the world and therefore the human were understood according to the teaching of Aristotle. Furthermore, Descartes ambition was to revolutionise this view and the first step in doing so was to start from the beginning. This essay will aim to explain the relationship…

RS Essay ‘The teleological argument proves that God exists.’ Evaluate this sentence. The teleological argument or the argument from design, proposed by the philosopher William Paley, is an argument for the existence of God. It is based on the theory of design and Paley uses the analogy of a watch having been designed by a watchmaker and the universe equally having a ‘universe-maker’. Thus, Paley deduces that the skilled designer who could create this complex and intricate universe could only be…

“The Allegory of The Cave” can be easily related to Plato's Theory of Forms, and both can be used to decipher the possibility of true human knowledge. The “Doctrine of 2 of 9 Forms” is one of Plato’s famous theories, which states that the physical world is not the real world and there is an ultimate world that exists beyond it (Macintosh). Plato says that there are two types of realms: the realm of corporeal things in the physical world and the realm of forms. First, the realm of corporeal…

Causal arguments are always invalid since there is no guarantee of any truth between the premises and the conclusion of the statement. Causal arguments base their truth on the degree of likelihood or probability as the cause of a certain circumstance. A causal argument asserts that there exists a correlation between the occurrences of two events in a particular situation. It asserts that the occurrence of one event is dependent on the other such that occurrence of “X” happened as a result of…

Philosophers set their minds to find the truth within ourselves and in the universe. Philosophers set out to answer powerful questions like, “What is truth.” The question itself presents a multitude of more questions: “What defines truth,” “Who determines truth,” and etc. Hundreds of years have passed and there have been many that have attempted to find that answer. Philosophers such as Plato have dedicated their lives to study and pondered to discover the answer to “what is truth?” Those…